February 83:35 p.m.

The fear ebbed somewhat the moment I stepped off the
mini-bus and began to foot my way to the waterfall. The fear
transfigured itself into focus, into concentration, into an
awareness, an intensity, a will. But then, as I found myself
lost, wandering some obviously wrong backward way, the fear
reasserted itself as fright.

Confronted, fear becomes pliable. Even the act of
confronting fear transforms it into concentration, into
action. But this is only transformation, not elimination.
Fear will re-transform itself given the right circumstance.
And its favorite form is fright, immobility. This is what
happened to me. When I stepped off the mini-bus I channeled
the fear I had been feeling into a concentration and an
action. But when I found myself lost I felt the fear rise
again. This time I could not channel it. I was on the wrong
road and I knew it. I was lost in some hamlet that was not
even shown on my map. This was fright, immobility.

Such a situation, however, does not allow for
immobility. Such a situation compels action. It compels
one to fight through the immobility and channel its fear into
action. I saw a taxi. Yes. One single taxi, parked,
driverless. A quick escape, it would be. The action was
before me then. But, just having the action before me
neutralized the immobility. I decided to skip the taxi. I
decided to retrace my path back to where I had debarked the
mini-bus, to begin again from the beginning. A lean man on a
raw-boned horse clopped by me then. He had a pointed beard.
A squat man on a well-nourished burro clopped by me then. He
had a floppy hat. I pondered this. I pondered what a raw-
boned horse and a corpulent burro on an otherwise quiet road
meant, what that squat man sitting astride that burro in that
wooden saddle meant, what his swatting at his burro with a
stick meant. I looked for other vehicles. But these were the
only moving vehicles on that road. There were two large
flatbed trucks, yes. But they were at rest, engines dead,
loaded with cylinders of liquid propane, being off-loaded of
their cylinders of liquid propane. One young man shouldering
a cylinder glanced at me curiously. I suffered the
immobility again. For I apprehended what it all meant.
Remoteness, it all meant. Vulnerability. I was very alone.
I was off the map. I was lost. But what could I do? I
could only continue on. The situation compelled me. Then
the little girls. Three little girls appeared just to
reinforce for me how obvious was my state of aloneness and
vulnerability, how undisguisable. They stood in print
dresses in a doorway. Seven, eight and nine years old,
maybe. The eldest glimpsed me. With great round eyes she
elbowed her younger sister then, or her cousin, or her
playmate, who elbowed the third. They all three gazed on my
passing. With ogling wondrous eyes they gazed on my passing,
as if I were some icon brought to life. Their astonished
staring stripped me of any illusion that I was not
conspicuous. I could not pretend, even to myself, that I was
not a neon light on a medieval signpost. Exposed, it
blinked. Alone, it blinked. Güero. Long hair.
Immobilized. But again the fear could only be expressed as
action, as striding, as a continued striding back toward
where the mini-bus had delivered me.

It was in these instants, I think, in the lee of the
three little girls, as I came to a knee in the road, that
fear found its perfect balance, that fright and action became
simultaneous, commensurate. I was frightened, immobilized,
naked, but because of it, concentrated, focused, intent on
acting, intent on my end. In thirty minutes I achieved it. I
stood where the bus had delivered me, I arrived to where I
had begun. No bus to be found now. No traffic to be seen.
And I had no alternative now but to forge ahead again to the
left instead of to the right. No opportunity for cowardice,
really. Indeed, had such an opportunity presented itself, I
would have seized it. And, yes, behold, there a pink church.
And further on I approached a small concrete shrine to the
Virgin. And these were the landmarks given by the guidebook,
the signals that I had achieved the right way. The balance
between the fears tipped to action then, the immobilization
dissipated. No elation yet, but all a focus now,
concentration; all an intensity and a will.

I began to trek down the bumpily cobbled road. Here a
cement yard. Here a yellow bungalow. Then a paunchy middle-
aged woman I squinted in the distance. She squinted me, too.
She froze for an instant. She looked around. She called to
someone. A little boy came scuttering out of the bush. The
woman hurried the boy then into a shack and disappeared
silently after him. I remembered a nearly identical scene in
the highlands of Puebla state. I had hiked a muddy road
toward a famous waterfall then too, with my Mexican
girlfriend. An old woman saw our coming. She shooed a
little boy away from his muddied games and into their shack.
She panted after him. She closed the door behind her
smartly. What did she fear from us, I wondered then. What
does she fear from me, I wondered now. But I moved now in
the right direction, I knew, so I felt my focus solidify. I
almost relaxed, chiding myself for my terror, embarrassed at
myself for my terror, for having to battle it even. What was
there to fear? A floppy hat on a burro? Three little girls?

A mountain mist shrouded the course of this walk. I
followed the road and followed it. Coffee bushes eight feet
high and dripping with eternal dew stood to the right and
left of the bumpily cobbled road. Banana trees hovered over
the coffee bushes. Coffee is a delicate plant, my Mexican
girlfriend told me that day long ago--she, the daughter of a
coffee grower. The banana trees nurse the coffee bushes, she
explained, protecting the green and red beans from the sun. I
followed the road and followed it. Coffee leaves shine a
vivid medium green and rubbery, with plicate folds. Coffee
pickers sang in the distance, as I trod, whistled among the
groves. Alien bird calls, I heard. Crickets. A burro laden
with sacks of beans roped to a banana tree stood. A man in
rope sandals moved. I followed the road and followed it
until at last I arrived here at this restaurant. At this
restaurant! An open air restaurant at the end of a nameless
cobbled road! An earth floor restaurant near the edge of a
gorge's cliff! A restaurant in the middle of a rain forest!

And so the fear, the fear which eagerly stretched its
legs the moment I left my hotel room this morning, which
followed me then through the Jalapa city bus trip, through
the forty minute mini-bus ride then into nowhere, through my
getting lost and unlost, that plaguing indefatigable fear
had hounded me to where? To a chair from which I could
observe a deferential round-faced waiter tramp up to me; and
mole Xiqueño order from him, and then consume; and now,
coffee, ask for. El Buscador, the restaurant is named, The
Searcher. Mole is a thick spicy chocolate sauce. This mole
was ladled over a chicken thigh and leg. Orange-colored
rice accompanied. A wilted salad. Very delicious. Ranchero
music, of course, plays over the restaurant radio. The roar
of the falls resounds through it. And now my grail of
coffee he brings.

Even as beautiful and green and lush as was the long
footing to this surreal restaurant table, it was no
preparation for the drama of the gorge below. Oddly, the
depth and color of the vegetation carpeting the gorge walls
is just as arresting to me as the violence of the fall
itself. That vegetation so dense, its hue so profound, even
hypnotic it becomes. Transfixing. So green as to be
sensual. So sensual as to be erotic. Throb. Magnetic. A
vertiginous affect it wreaks. Magical. A spell. As if it
were some witching brocade from some parallel dimension that,
once beheld, restructured the very biology of seeing.
Absorptive.

A long downward flight of steps you scale to a dirt path
through undergrowth and trees that leads to the blueblack
pool into which the falls rage. I found a dry boulder and
sat for some ninety minutes tasting the sharp air, watching
the cool mist of it leap from the riotous waters, envisioning
Domingo limp slowly through that early mystical scene. The
setting could not be better placed, but I cannot even begin
to list the details I omitted. When I wrote the scene for my
unfinished novel I based it on my recollections of that
waterfall in Puebla state. Those recollections lie prostrate
now before notes scribbled in a cataclysmic moment. I sat
dizzy from the violence of the falls, scribbling the
description, suspended in time, trying to ride the essence of
the vigor of the scene, trying to seize the life of it in
words that would resurrect it later in the unfinished novel.
When first I looked down from the viewing platform above I
felt dread and hesitation. Awe, I felt. I could not
recreate this. I was right--I have not. But maybe my
scribblings suggest that at least it cannot be recreated.

Now Pre-Colombian flutes from the restaurant radio. Or
maybe it is a recording. No, a commercial now. I will revisit
these falls at least once before continuing on from Jalapa,
for a second attempt at re-creation. I enjoyed hot water for
my shower this morning. Last night I did not. I will
probably rouse myself earlier before my next excursion here
to enjoy another hot shower and arrive here earlier. Next
time I won't get lost. At three this morning the festive
street below my hotel window woke me. So much noise and
traffic passing that I thought it morningtime, seven a.m. or
thenabouts. It was three.

Beyond the restaurant canopy I can see now another young
man tourist descending those steps to the viewing platform.
American, he looks, maybe European. I encountered him last
night, too, crossing through the arcade of the Jalapa
governmental palace. His body language offered conversation
as we passed one another. I inclined my head. I smiled.
But I continued on, stride unchecked. Young man and solo
traveler. Just like me. I can see him out on the viewing
platform now taking a quick photograph of the falls and
gorge. That snapshot will fail. In fact, it will probably
be less true to the scene than my scribblings. I never take
photographs anymore. They have that reproduction problem I
mentioned yesterday, that dimming of the life of something.
And they also distort memory, I think. A year from now that
young man will be back in some foreign city and he will
recall this trip to these falls and when he recalls this trip
to these falls he will probably remember the snapshot pinned
to his wall before he remembers the events he now
experiences, this stirring awesome reality now surrounding
him. The life of the scene, in fact, may end up completely
lost, buried in the dull photographs he takes so
promiscuously. He is trying to record the experience on
three-by-five squares of paper. This is impossible. The
experience is fluid, is aural, is bodily and has taste.
Photographs break up the experience, circumscribe it, freeze
it. They record sight, badly; and in doing so shunt memory
from the wholeness of the experience, from the meaning. Like
that weight of this musty sweet air, I feel. It will not be
in that photograph. Or the thunderous powerful all-
encompassing roar beyond. That will not be reproduced. I
suppose a great photographer might translate all this into a
photograph. I believe this is possible. But then it is the
photographer translating it more than the photograph itself.
And then it is a piece of art, not a reproduction...

7 p.m

I'm back in my hotel now. That ellipses above represents
a long gap of time which included my conversation with the
young male tourist who suddenly appeared before my round
restaurant table; my retracing my steps then up the long
nameless cobbled lane; my locating and boarding a conveyance
back to the outskirts of Jalapa; and then, my dithering
before the Jalapa city bus and final decision not to board
it. I decided to try to find my way to the center of town by
foot. The Jalapa centro sits on a mount from which you can
see most of the city. I knew this. So, I thought, walk
toward the mount. A long backwards meanderingly circular
route I groped through. No map. But the halo of mountain
mist was cool, the shadowless gray light even. And, finally,
quite footsore, I arrived.

The young male tourist was not a tourist at all but an
American student studying at the University of the Americas.
Dan was his name. Dan from Cincinnati. He had a long
weekend from school, he said, because of "The Day of the
Constitution"--a Mexican holiday. Though all of his comrades
went on to Veracruz for Carnival, he stopped at Jalapa.

"Were you in Veracruz for Carnival," he asked.

"No," and I paused. I was already seeking to end our
colloquy and leave. Dan from Cincinnati was quite self-
satisfied. This daytrip of his, his trip to Mexico in
general, I think, was a kind of conquest for him, and a proud
one. It showed: Chest puffed out, smirking to himself with
an affected, overdone worldliness. I saw a hint of it
yesterday under that Jalapa gallery. The phase is natural.
I went through it, too. He does not want to converse with you
as much as he wants to hash over his daring, his
resourcefulness, his mettle. The whole time he talks to you
he smiles at you collusively, as if to say, "Well! Look at
us!" It only means he's not yet been ground down by
traveling. It only means he's not yet really traveled.
Seasoned solo travelers are offish until pitched together by
some circumstance. They brood. They never glad-hand.

"Being in Veracruz during Carnival was a coincidence," I
said. "I'm not the party type."

"Me either."

We answered the basic questions: places of origin,
destinations, sites visited. He spoke his Spanish well, with
a crisp gringo accent, and the waiter moved on. He did not
have time enough, really, to pose any probing questions like
Frans from Holland. So I was able to avoid revealing my
would-be writer status. "The first stop of a longer trip," I
simply said. That was as far as my characterization of this
journey went until pressed. But once pressed, and once, from
pressing me, Dan from Cincinnati grasped the length and scope
of this trip, Dan from Cincinnati became offended. This
follows the pattern. Such neophytes see themselves as
adventurers, as having swilled from the ardent spirits of
danger. Their egos thrive on this illusion. So when they
encounter someone a little more experienced than they, a
little more exposed, their self-delusion buckles. They
anger. That I am unimpressed with myself or with him
probably heightened the offense. In a way, this trip is the
most comfortable one I've ever taken, with its hotel rooms,
with its padded budget. I would never call it dangerous. I
would be reluctant even to call it adventurous. I am here to
work.

"Alone?" he asked, his tone irritated by now.

"Alone," I said.

"Well," he said, and a distinct note of vindictiveness
found his voice, "Watch out for the cops."

I did not even answer this.

His mole Xiqueño arrived--thankfully. It gave me my exit
line.

"Provecho," I said to him graciously.

I left.

A good friend of mine first visited Mexico in exactly
the same way Dan from Cincinnati is visiting Mexico--through
that university outside Puebla, the University of the
Americas. I worked as an intern at a Mexico City newspaper
the same semester she attended school there. I did not even
know she was in Mexico until she contacted me. What a
surprise. A hand-written, unaddressed, unsealed note from a
central Kansas friend--and in my Mexico City mail box! We
met secretly some weeks later, at the pond on the
university's campus. We met secretly because she was living
with my old girlfriend, in Puebla, sleeping in fact in the
same room I had slept in the month I stayed there. I had a
crush on that farmer's daughter for many years. She lives in
Buenos Aires now. A beautiful one. And named for
Pasternak's greatest heroine.

Traffic noises through my window now. And that aroma of
eats curls up tantalizingly from the restaurant directly
below. And a poorly blown saxophone. And I hopefully will
not have to sleep through marimbas again. But...and now they
begin, the marimbas, as if on cue. They're early tonight.
But it is already dark, I suppose. On with the desk lamp, I
guess. That light bulb hanging from the ceiling needs some
company if I'm going to continue working. Remembering Lara
brought to mind The Sandra Texts. I will try to draft one or
two scenes now. This, I think, is what Dan from Cincinnati
has not yet faced. This lonesomeness. A beating, it is. A
scourging. A whipping. Too gregarious, Dan is; too
transparent; too superficial still to have faced it.
Unending when you travel alone. It strips away the fat of
one's personality--those proud illusions, that narcissism.
It forces one inward. It's why solo travelers brood.